Craig Cotter
Winter 2026 | Poetry
Rye
Instead of oatmeal
rye meal.
Rolled rye from a Chinese market.
Tolstoy, who lost his teeth early,
ate a lot of buckwheat porridge.
He had tantrums
in his Moscow mansion—
would walk to Yasnaya Polyana
70 miles
to calm himself.
Proust left his best furniture
to a gay brothel.
Proust, Tolstoy, and O'Hara—
if I don’t join them
I’ll disappear.
--for William Heyen
Craig Cotter is the author of four collections of poetry, including the aroma of toast (Black Tie Press, 1989), THERE’S SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH ME (Black Tie Press, 1990), CHOPSTIX NUMBERS (Ahsahta Press, Boise State University, 2000), and After Lunch with Frank O’Hara (Chelsea Station Editions, 2014), which was a finalist for The National Poetry Prize. He was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Arts Award in New Gay Fiction, the Tampa Review Prize, the Word Works Prize, the Lost Horse Press Poetry Prize, the 42 Miles Press Award, the Southeast Missouri State University Press’ Cowles Poetry Prize, and the Fjords Review Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in hundreds of journals around the world. He lives and teaches in Pasadena, California. For more information, visit www.craigcotter.com